1516T2g1 South Korea/Reflection
Day 2 |
Contents
Day 1: Reflections
Kozaza
Kozaza facilitates an economy by the people through sharing underutilized resources – the home. SanKu Jo, the CEO of Kozaza believes strongly in the suitability of home sharing in Korea due to the unique Korean experience one will get. His strategy is to target the younger generation by making presence in popular dramas and through celebrities and influencers. This I believe is a good starting point in providing a way for millennials around the world to visit Korea and receive traffic for Kozaza’s inbound revenue. In Korea, countless of home sharing businesses have failed. Kozaza beaten the odds and remain the leading player because of SanKu Jo’s hope for a better experience in Korea and his strong will and competence in managing its operations.
SanKu Jo seems to be the person with big actions. He copies carefully what AirBnB is doing and is able to see the unique experience people want through Korea home sharing, and execute it without a doubt.
Weenu
Weenu focuses on everything art with a social cause. They strongly believe in using art to promote social issues through FESTA – a festival where artists meet with the public and share social issues. Weenu Provides education programmes as a revenue stream for artists, and promotes artists online through collaboration with NAVER Corp. Weenu’s strategy is to get big players (i.e. NAVER Corp) and sponsorships to promote the artists’ crafts in return for advertising.
What hit me was Miho Heo’s passion in social causes. In Korea, female workers do not get paternity leave but Weenu has it. Miho Heo’s decision to provide this welfare empowers her employees and hopefully make a statement to the SK government.
Seoul Google Campus
The Seoul Google Campus focuses on incubating and mentoring startups with great ideas, turning their ideas into fruition and anticipating the day they move out from the co-working space. This belief excites the event planners and mentors which I thought is core in forming their motivation to host the startups and the hundreds of events held there.
1. Kozaza
The Jack Ma quote "If we fight in the ocean, we lose—but if we fight in the river, we win.” made an impression on me because it is about finding the niche market to target, and it was a challenge to scope the target market for my IS480 project. Indeed, targeting a niche market is a way to survive, but from the sharing by CEO Mr. SanJu Ko, I'm not sure targeting a niche market is enough, as the value proposition as a niche-targeting may not be sufficient for consumers to use Kozaza rather than bigger market places like AirBnB. That brings me to the second takeaway - Kozaza differentiate by providing a service personnel to bridge the communication between travellers and homeowners who do not understand English (and these non-English speakers elderly would be the ones owning the authentic hanock homes). I think that the localized service personnel is the competitive advantage much stronger than his fee-free model, since trust, also emphasized by him, is the most important factor when it comes to travel lodging.
2. Weenu
Weenu's tagline "99% of art and 99% of people" made the biggest impression on me. I later found out from the Project Manager that it means making all other art accesible to all other people, making art more equitable. The founder's energy, charisma, and enthusiasm is probably the key to success of weenu. weenu probably have a difficult time hiring talents as mentioned by the Kozaza CEO when he explained the difference between Silicon Valley & South Korea, and the status as a social enterprise makes it harder to hire talents with the prospect of making more money. However, weenu may have hired the right people with the right mindset BECAUSE of the social enterprise label. It is heartening to hear that they have managed to achieve tripling of growth in sales over the past few years after not making a profit for ~5 years.
3. Google Campus @ Seoul
Google Campus @ Seoul was a little underwhelming, I have envisioned a large complex where the whole building is occupied by Google employees, but, I enjoyed learning about the cmapus, especially on the Device Testing Lab - where startup companies can make use of the many devices in the Lab to do their app testing, it will be wonderful if SMU SIS has the same thing. I wasn't able to ask this question - but what is it in for Google to spend so much money to maintain the entrepreneurship community in Seoul? I believe it is to be in the centre of innovation in this part of Asia so that they can leverage on the connections and perhaps buyout promising startups. It is encoruage to know that space is running out at the campus, it tells that Seoul entreprenuership circle is indeed growing.
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Key Learning Points for Day 1 of Company Visits
- Reflection goes a long way to learning what I've experienced - By reflecting on the events and guest lectures, I understand the lessons learnt much better.
- Listening - Like what I've said in my profile, listening is key to absorbing experience like a sponge. Quick and really easy if you concentrate. Coffee by Weenu helped alot too.
Learning Points from Kozaza
- Understanding the demographic is key to put the product forward and market it – Kozaza fights in a market where Airbnb has international market power while there were many players in Korea who tried homesharing on a global scale and failed. Last year's TSM went to a similar company and that company scaled down its operations. Kozaza targets (1) Korea (2) homesharing while other companies were too ambitious by either targeting a too large a segment (Asia / Worldwide) or promising too much (hotels + homestay). Kozaza goes a step further to target short term (hanokstay), long term (seoulstay) and high valued (finestay).
- Senior talent leading a company provides foresight - With experience comes a less chance of failure. The founder, SanKu Jo, mentioned his experience is big conglomerates and banks, backed by academia as a PHD holder.
- Trust is important to leveraging the Sharing Economy - Connected resources rely on being open and safe, and having trust in the provider is a key tenet to operations.
Learning Points from Weenu
- Artists in Korea are undervalued for their creations and efforts - Weenu has two objectives in helping these artists as part of their social cause (1) Increase accessibility to art and (2) give the artists better opportunities to increase their earnings
- Persevere - Weenu suffered 5 years of losses before turning a profit recently in 2013. They fought hard to double this amount in 2014.
- Diversify the engagement platforms - Intimate spaces (FESTA), continual engagement (Art education) and 24/7 availability (online) enabled the omnipresence of Weenu
- Remember to help the people helping Weenu - the same idea as in an emergency, putting on your oxygen mask on a plane for yourself before assisting your daughter or son, it is important to keep the people running Weenu contented. Weenu understands the culture (of Korea) it operates in. This is exemplified by allowing their female employees leave before their 5pm curfew and allowing all staffs to have proper holiday-rest. Employees are people too. No woman should work like men especially if they are childbearing, and no man should work without rest. Treat people well and they will be nice to you back.
Learning Points from Google Campus
- Incubators & Accelerators are present in the community, entrepreneurs need to have good, viable ideas and know where to look for help
- Entrepreneurship comes with great rewards (a "graduated" team from Google Campus Seoul achieved 70million in funding) but great risks too
- Being connected to other entrepreneurs spurs innovation and these other players could one day be a key resource or a working business relationship (like in the case of the lighting & special effects company was connected to a startup just by a simple billboard in the Campus, and the relationship lasted more than 5 years)
1. Kozaza
Kozaza is a home sharing platform similar to Airbnb. The founder, Mr Sangku Jo, had in mind to start up Kozaza to provide ownership to sharing, make use of under utilised resources and create an economy by the people. This has enabled monetary savings and the maximization of resources. Although successful in Korea, Kozaza can leverage on the international market through the Hanok stay as it is more popular with tourists and foreigners. In light of this, I would think that Kozaza can utilize marketing efforts such as getting popular Korean variety shows such as Running Man to use their facilities for their show as it has a large international audience. This would allow them to create greater awareness of such places and provide opportunities for future growth of Kozaza.
2. Weenu
Weenu provides a central platform for artists to publicise their artwork and for easy access of users to purchase these artworks. They have utilised business concepts from established platforms such as Etsy and Pinterest and have also branched efforts into three avenues – FESTA, Education and online to reach out to a larger audience. What caught my interest was their ability to differentiate themselves from social norms (e.g. ending working hours for women at 5pm even though there was an initial conflict of interest). They also shared many interesting insights on each avenue as well as the positive impacts it has brought about such as having 300 artists who joined each of the eight festivals in 2015 and having an audience size of over a million. With their success in bringing income to artists and experiencing a gain in popularity over the past few years, I would suggest for Weenu to target specific sectors to improve benefits provided to them. One of the sectors would be fresh graduates without prior experience as they are part of the future workforce and this platform will allow for them to be equipped with better art capabilities and recognition through art advisory and media.
3. Google Campus @ Seoul
The visit to Google Campus in Seoul was a refreshing experience as I was able to witness the day-to-day lives of Google employees on a Monday afternoon. The interaction for Q&A allowed for greater insights as to what Google provides for startups – Networking space without having to pay. Anyone with the membership card would be able to access any of the six campuses around the world to utilize their facilities provided. Furthermore, mentorship and training programs were given to these startups while letting them freely experiment with their work on campus. Google also ran events such as getting Mums with newborns to acquire information about re-entering the workplace. These efforts have allowed many individuals benefit significantly and bringing success to startups in the Korean market.